'Malcolm' Mom's Pregnancy Plays a Part

By Stephen M. Silverman

Thursday July 25, 2002 01:00 PM EDT

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It's not just the women in "Sex and the City" who are dealing with the arrival of babies. Jane Kaczmarek, the Emmy-nominated actress who plays mom Lois on the Fox comedy hit "Malcolm in the Middle," will see her third real-life pregnancy written into her role. "I've been told they're going to work the pregnancy into the show," Kaczmarek, 46, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel this week. (Kaczmarek is a Wisconsin native, as is her husband.) "The plan is to do some episodes (with Lois) not pregnant, and then some pregnant," the actress told the paper. The last time Kaczmarek was expecting, she spent a lot of time on the show hiding behind giant frying pans, chairs and refrigerator doors, notes the Associated Press. For the past 10 years she has been married to actor Bradley Whitford, who costars on NBC's "The West Wing," and they have a daughter, Frances, 4, and a son, George, 2. Kaczmarek and Whitford know the gender of the new baby, which is due in November, but she's keeping that a secret. "I'm telling friends," she told the Journal Sentinel, "but I'm not telling the media." Besides this being her third baby, last week Kaczmarek received her third Emmy nomination for playing Lois. Whitford also was nominated, as a supporting actor for his portrayal as the president's deputy chief of staff, Josh Lyman, on "The West Wing."